May 27, 2011

Since my last post here about Ogi Ogas & Sai Gaddam's A Billion Wicked Thoughts we've had more Fun Times together. Some of the ensuing discussions have been very helpful for me in clarifying things I "just know", and in spotting the problems with some of other people's conventional wisdom: for instance, that men are "sexually more visual" than women.

I started playing table tennis slightly more seriously than usual about 2 years ago. A good friend of mine who did Chinese as an undergrad and played a lot both while living in Guangdong and when he came back, was looking for a partner to take lessons with him and asked me. I said sure, why not.

More below the fold, but just jump into the comments if you have something else to talk about.

May 24, 2011

If you are in the zone, please make sure you are never more than 15 minutes from a solid, preferably underground tornado shelter this afternoon. Monitor local TV/radio closely! And when the sky gets that sickly greenish color, you know what to do. I did part of my growing-up in Champaign-Urbana, IL, and I've never forgotten what tornado weather looks like.

A lot of people are posting links to their favorite "end of the world" songs today, and here's my nominee:

at YouTube
By chagrined, using audio from Great Big Sea's version of "It's the End of the World", video from "Life After People". Even if all us humans disappear tomorrow, there's plenty of life to go on.

If you don't believe the Rapture will happen real soon now, it behooves you to listen to Real Climate Scientists warning that "Earth, unlike Alien, has no sequel":

May 17, 2011

The Fourth Amendment continues to be onion-peeled into nothingness. KENTUCKY v. KING puts another nail in the coffin as police gain the right to kick in your door simply because they hear movement within your dwelling.

Obviously that's probable cause, because noise indicates a crime.

Does that make sense to you? It does to 8 out of 9 members of the Supreme Court.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said police officers do not violate the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches by kicking down a door after the occupants of an apartment react to hearing that officers are there by seeming to destroy evidence.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the majority had handed the police an important new tool.

“The court today arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases,” Justice Ginsburg wrote. “In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, never mind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.”

The case, Kentucky v. King, No. 09-1272, arose from a mistake. After seeing a drug deal in a parking lot, police officers in Lexington, Ky., rushed into an apartment complex looking for a suspect who had sold cocaine to an informant.

But the smell of burning marijuana led them to the wrong apartment. After knocking and announcing themselves, they heard sounds from inside the apartment that they said made them fear that evidence was being destroyed. They kicked the door in and found marijuana and cocaine but not the original suspect, who was in a different apartment.

The Kentucky Supreme Court suppressed the evidence, saying that any risk of drugs being destroyed was the result of the decision by the police to knock and announce themselves rather than obtain a warrant.

The United States Supreme Court reversed that decision on Monday, saying the police had acted lawfully and that was all that mattered. The defendant, Hollis D. King, had choices other than destroying evidence, Justice Alito wrote.

He could have chosen not to respond to the knocking in any fashion, Justice Alito wrote. Or he could have come to the door and declined to let the officers enter without a warrant.

“Occupants who choose not to stand on their constitutional rights but instead elect to attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame,” Justice Alito wrote.